Jimmy Fallon got into the holiday spirit Wednesday night by giving everybody in his Tonight Show audience a free iPad Air 2.
The big reveal wasn’t quite up there with Oprah Winfrey’s 2004 giveaway: 276 new Pontiac G6s.
But it wasn’t bad.
Fallon has a long history with Apple. His desk on the set always sports the latest-model MacBook. He’s done live iPad-assisted duets with the likes of Billy Joel and Robert Plant. And he teamed up this fall with Justin Timberlake to do some brilliant — but uncredited — voice work on a series of iPhone 6 ads.
I don’t know enough about how these marketing deals are put together to know who footed what part of the bill for Fallon’s iPads — which start at $499 for Wi-Fi only.
But we learned in the aftermath of Oprah Winfrey’s “You’ve got a car! You’ve got a car!” Event that there’s no such thing as a free Pontiac. Winfrey declared the cars as $28,500 “prizes” — not gifts — which put the recipients on the hook for as much as $7,000 in taxes.
No word from NBC on the tax status of the iPads.
Below: The Hulu version of Fallon’s iPad “Stocking Stuffer” segment.
[Hulu id=lqyna__lnmz36pprgionzw width=512]
And for some vintage viral video, here’s Winfrey’s big reveal. Jimmy Fallon could learn something from her about how to stage these things.
Follow Philip Elmer-DeWitt on Twitter at @philiped. Read his Apple (AAPL) coverage at coins2day.com/ped or subscribe via his RSS feed.
